hey,
thanks to the couple of people who have posted on my blog so far! i hope more people will join in soon. feel free to go back and post your thoughts on the first blog if you have more. i am hoping these topics will stay open and as new thoughts come up, new posts will be added to the blog. so far we haven't had anyone post from the more fundamentalist side of the argument and i'd love to see the debate really go back and forth.
alright, let's move on...
topic 2: "before we get to life on earth, lets talk about the life of the earth"
solar systems, galaxys, and the universe are moving and growing, living, being born and dying, almost like clockwork. Some people believe that the universe could be no different than it is, that it has to be this way, and it is an act of the Supernatural to be this perfect. Others believe there was an infinite amount of possible outcomes for the universe, and it just happened to end up the way it is Naturally. What do you think?
p.s. this question may be a little more out there (pun definitely intended) but i hope it will spark some interesting theories and maybe some interesting scientific facts will come out as well.
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hey adam,
ReplyDeletewell first let us say (adam and shanah), we will be coming at your blog from a much different perspective. we talked a lot about perspective, and how we each have our own. ours is not one of science really, it's just not our bag baby. instead, we will approach things from our world view-- faith.
it's pretty simple to answer your questions. for us, we can find most answers in the bible. and if we can't find them in the word, we'll seek personal revelation from the author and perfecter. It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.(Proverbs 25:2).
creation, of course, is supernatural. i disagree, that believing the supernatural is the easy way out. on the contrary, for those who truly believe in the supernatural, it is a costly and challenging journey. To believe in the unseen takes incredible faith. Most "christians" do not believe wholly in the supernaturally as they might claim. The bible speaks of man having authority to do just as Jesus did on earth-- heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, perform the miraculous. To walk out that kind of life, it ain't no easy way out. And... we have seen miracles, healed the sick (with a single prayer), and cast out demons. we would love to see the dead raised-- and we hope to while we're still here. All that to say...a life of faith in the unseen may not hold all the answers, but it's true nonetheless.
so...adam...this is as scientific as we might get for you...For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Col 1:16-17).
He holds the atoms together, man. So good to know he holds them together.
Adam, we want you to know that we pray for you not because it feels good (cause often it doesn't) or because it's a good deed, or because we are supposed to. but, because the God of your universe is jealously raging over you, and it's our time to respond to what's going on in your atmosphere. thanks for allowing us to be a part of your life. we love it.
and to your other readers, sorry that this is so pointed at adam. we mostly care what he thinks :).
adam and shanah.
Well I guess I'd have to respond to this question with a question. What's so perfect about it?
ReplyDeleteI'm reminded of a series on PBS I bought for my bio class to watch during our evolution segment. This is from the PBS website-"Through natural selection, different types of eyes have emerged in evolutionary history -- and the human eye isn't even the best one, from some standpoints. Because blood vessels run across the surface of the retina instead of beneath it, it's easy for the vessels to proliferate or leak and impair vision. So, the evolution theorists say, the anti-evolution argument that life was created by an "intelligent designer" doesn't hold water: If God or some other omnipotent force was responsible for the human eye, it was something of a botched design."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/1/l_011_01.html
Now I know this is getting into Evolution which I'm sure you have saved for another time, but I think the point is perception is reality. Complexity can be taken as a sign of an omnipotent force, or as the culmination of happenings. I think you know what side of the debate I'm on.
Although I have no real desire to get into an involved theological debate, I have a couple of points I'd like to make.
ReplyDeleteFirst, Dasha makes a good point that the universe is far from perfect. Not even delving into biology and the myriad of imperfections brought about by evolution, the universe as a whole is not an hospitable place. It so happens that our planet can support life (for the time being) and that we all feel reasonably safe on our little pale blue dot, but when it comes down to it, our days are numbered. In many ways it seems that the universe it TRYING to kill us. We only haven't noticed because out entire span of existence on Earth has been barely the blink of an eye in comparison to the life of the universe.
My second point. I feel the need to address one of the things akeyes said. "He holds the atoms together, man. So good to know he holds them together."
I'll grant that this statement was likely (hopefully) tongue-in-cheek, but it helps to illustrate my point nicely. I may be a bit wordy, but here it is:
We know what holds atoms together, and it's not the magical hand of a supernatural deity. Nuclei are held together by the weak and strong nuclear forces and electrons are held to the nucleus by the electromagnetic force. It may have been conceivable that god-dunnit two centuries ago before be understood the atom, but now we know better.
Before modern astronomy everyone believed that stars and planets moved through the firmament by being pushed by angels. Now we know better.
Before geology people believed that the earth (and entire universe for that matter) was created just a few thousand years ago. Now we know better.
Before medicine everyone believed that disease was caused by demons or punishment from god and not these invisible bacteria and viruses. Now we know better.
My point is that God is shrinking. The more we learn about the world around us, the less room there is for God. He/She/It simply becomes more irrevelant with every new discovery to the point where even now most semi-rational believers relegate God to being the one who fine-tuned natural laws and physical constants to ensure that everything turned out as it is.
Now, if you want to believe that, that's fine, but the 'fine-tuning' argument is flawed in that we are a part of the system being analyzed. Saying that the odds of existence are so slim that the fact that we are here is proof of God is like saying that the odds of 5 poker players all having exactly the hands that they drew are so slim that it MUST be divine intervention! It simply doesn't make sense to argue the odds of events that have already come about.
So to answer your original question, Scooter, as far as I know the universe came about naturally. While it is possible that I'm wrong, supernatural explanations ARE the easy way out as they do not require further investigation, only further bolstering. Having faith in the 'unseen' is only difficult in the face of actually SEEING things that counter that faith.
"in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth." that is the first line in the bible. until the past couple hundred years people thought that actually took place 6000 yeas ago... today it's hard to refute the evidence that the world is not that young... not by several billion years...
ReplyDeletesoooo people have stated that the first line in the bible is a metaphor... the problem is... the universe, "heavens", came into being after the big bang (or little pop, or slight fizzle, or whatever noise you can imagine) about 14 billion years ago... "and the earth" condensed and cooled about 4 and 1/2 billion years ago to a planet remotely habitable to single celled organisms... so "the beginning" was 14 billion years ago, AND 4 and 1/2 billion years ago?
that's like watching a sports competition and saying that in the beginning one team scored twice... however when looking at the score card with time you see one goal scored in the first minute, and the next goal scored in the second half... no one in their right mind would say that the point scored part way through the second half was near the beginning...
soooo maybe because it was before human kind (and because we are so self-centered and egocentric) that it refers to the time before humans as "the beginning"... but then where do you draw the line? where does metaphor end and literal truth begin? when do you stop accepting metaphors if the first line of divinely inspired scripture is a metaphor? couldn't we just assume that more (or even all of it) is metaphor?
according to the next set of verses (know as creation week) god creates a hospitable world and all the life forms on it in 6 days... again some people have proposed that these days are metaphors for eons passing...
all through the Torah (the Hebrew scriptures that most people condescendingly call the old testament) the Hebrew word 'yom' is used... the literal translation is 'day'... now, the Jewish people adopted their way of viewing each day of the week from the Babylonians in that the day started at sunDOWN one evening and went through the night, through the day, and the 'yom' ended at sunDOWN the next evening when the next 'yom' would begin...
i'd like to mention here that the Babylonians were a world power with their own system of writing before the Hebrew people even existed... besides the way to view the day, two other things were adopted by the Hebrews from the Babylonians; a creation week myth, and an deluge myth (noah's ark, from the Torah)
ancient man created myths to explain things he didn't understand... our universe is somewhere between order and chaos... if it's designed then it is severely flawed... if it in Natural, it is just to be expected that things would go wrong... that's how nature works... some things have turned out great, but we must remember: over 99% of the species of life that have existed on this planet are extinct... that is a lot of error for which a creator would need to take credit...
~i ran out of room, apparently you can only post like 4000 characters in each one of these comments, so the rest of what i wrote is below~
ReplyDeletefurthermore... our planet itself is in the realm known as the Goldilocks belt... it is a region of our solar system that is not to close, and not too far from the sun (like the children's fable; not too hot, not too cold)... some people have stated that being in this belt proves design... but take the creator out of the picture and life exists in the Goldilocks belt because: life exists in the Goldilocks belt. that is it! in a nutshell we live here in this habitable region of our solar system because we couldn't live else where... on top of that, the habitable region goes from Venus to Jupiter... that is billions of miles for us to exist... people say that if we were to drift even slightly out of our orbit we would freeze or burn up... that is simply a fallacy... in fact every single year our orbit moves a little closer to the sun then a little further away with no effect on life on the planet... IF we were in some perfect place, where we WOULD burn or freeze with slight degrees of difference, i would consider the creator... but as it stands on this topic... the solar system doesn't need a creator... it is hospitable and cruel enough without one...